Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016

Gunnar_Zarncke

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

That only moves the disagreement into the decision about what description would be appropriate. I wouldn't call that a resolution.

I agree that "resolved" may be too optimistic, but at any rate argument about these questions can (in principle) be markedly improved by moving from ill-defined questions to better-defined ones. Different people might prefer different descriptions but there's at least some chance that when the question is framed as "which description do you prefer?" they will recognize that a large part of their disagreement is about individual preferences rather than external facts.

Suppose Alice says that Islam is a religion of peace and Bob says it is... (read more)

1Bound_up10y

If everyone understood the disagreement as merely semantic, few would care (once they got used to not thinking of it as a defense of religion or of secularism or whatever).